Clutching the vial, Nolaa snapped at her Adjutant Advisor. “Hovrak, bring out the prisoner.” Her tattooed head-tail thrashed in anticipation, while the optical sensor implanted in her other tentacle stump gleamed, recording all the details around her.
The wolfman barked a command, and two lumbering Gamorrean guards strode in from a side tunnel, bearing between them the cloaked form of an Imperial guard. Limp scarlet robes hung around him. His bullet-shaped helmet was an impenetrable red mask with only a black vee-slit over his eyes.
“An Imperial guard!” Rullak said, raising his moist hands. “I thought they had all been destroyed.”
“This one had schemes of his own,” Nolaa said. “He and several partners concocted a fake Emperor in hopes that they could rule a Second Imperium in his name, like a gang of thugs—but their plans fell apart when the new Jedi Knights defeated the Shadow Academy. He was the only one to escape.”
The captive struggled, but the piglike Gamorrean security escorts held firm, paying no heed to the Red Guard’s resistance.
Kambrea, the Devaronian, leaned forward and cackled. “Yes, I remember how powerful the Red Guards were. They used to bully us.”
“Kill humans,” Corrsk growled, as if the comment were somehow relevant.
Nolaa stood in front of the scarlet-robed man. “This Red Guard continued to wear this uniform, this mask, to bank on his intimate connections with the former Empire. He went to the fringes of the underworld, hoping to ingratiate himself with certain … criminal elements.” Her head-tail twitched. “For some reason he apparently considered the Diversity Alliance a ‘criminal element.' He didn’t realize just how much hatred alien species still hold against the Empire. And now the tables have turned on him.”
Nolaa leaned closer to the guard, who stood rigidly at attention. “We can still make use of his Imperial knowledge, however.”
“But what about the plague?” the Quarren asked. “When will we see the demonstration you promised?”
Nolaa wrinkled her brow. “Though the Emperor had no intention of ever unleashing it, he could not bring himself to destroy such an efficient, useful tool. So he ordered it stored in a hidden weapons depot on a small asteroid station. Then he erased the depot’s coordinates from Imperial archives, so that no one knew where the stockpile of his terrible virus lay hidden.
“Most of the surviving Imperials have been scattered by now, but this one ranked high, close to Palpatine himself. I presume he knows the location of the plague storehouse. I have asked him to direct me there so that the Diversity Alliance may commandeer these valuable resources….” Nolaa ran her clawed hand along the polished plasteel of the Red Guard’s helmet. He flinched. “But he has declined our offer.” She flicked a glance back at the three spectators. “So far.”
She held up the tiny vial in front of the Red Guard’s eye slit. “Tell me where the rest is stored. This is your final chance.”
The Red Guard’s helmet swung from side to side in mute defiance.
Nolaa heaved a sigh. “Very well, then, face the consequences.” She dropped the crystalline vial to the stone floor of the cave. With barely disguised relish, Nolaa stamped down and crushed it with her booted foot, exposing the viral solution to the open air.
The three spectators staggered backward. Gasping in horror, they scrambled to cover their mouths and nostrils and tried—unsuccessfully—not to breathe. Confused, the Gamorrean guards blinked stupidly down at the broken vial, wondering if they should clean it up.
Nolaa Tarkona merely watched.
The Red Guard lunged and writhed in a violent attempt to escape the Gamorreans’ grasp—but the seizure rapidly became something else entirely. His body trembled. He bucked convulsively.
“You may release him,” Nolaa said. “There’s no longer any danger.” The piglike guards looked at each other, shrugged, then stomped away.
The captive sank to his knees, shaking. His gloved hands pawed at his chest, his stomach. The three honored Diversity Alliance soldiers stood back against the wall of the grotto, staring in fascinated horror.
The Imperial guard’s chest heaved. Gurgling sounds came from beneath the scarlet helmet, as if he were trying to suck in lungfuls of air but only managed to inhale viscous saliva.
His gloved hands reached up to grasp his smooth helmet, fumbled with the hidden catch. His arms shook and his feet tapped against the floor as the plague flowed like molten lead through every nerve in his body.
Above the noise of his rasping and retching for breath, Nolaa could hear the clasp of the helmet come loose. The Red Guard’s hands clutched the glossy plasteel and pulled. His body arched. The helmet lifted just a little, not quite revealing the guard’s face—then he sagged into a limp pile of scarlet cloth.
“Impressive,” Hovrak said with a growl, his long tongue licking the points of his canine teeth.
“Even better than I had hoped.” Nolaa turned to the three still-frightened Diversity Alliance observers. “You see, the plague was developed to be DNA-specific. It affects only victims with a human genetic structure. Aliens are immune. All of us here are breathing the same air, moving in the same room—yet the disease struck down only this pitiful Red Guard, while the rest of us went about our business unaffected.”
“But,” Kambrea said, gradually inching forward, “why would the Emperor develop such a thing? Humans were his subjects.”
“True,” Nolaa answered, “but many were also Rebels. Palpatine intended to unleash this plague to quash insurrections on colony worlds—until he realized how easily it could spread. One carrier from world to world might break a quarantine—and within weeks this disease could have made his Empire a galaxy-wide charnel house.”
At Nolaa’s gesture of dismissal the Gamorreans came forward, grabbed the Red Guard’s body, and dragged him by his scarlet sleeves across the stone floor. Once they turned down a side passage and out of sight, Nolaa heard the Red Guard’s helmet clatter to the flagstones. The Gamorreans grumbled and snorted, blaming each other for the accident, then one apparently snatched up the helmet again. They continued dragging their victim away to where he could be disposed of.
“You mean to spread this plague?” Corrsk asked. “Kill all the humans?”
Nolaa crossed her arms over her chest. “Wouldn’t that be the proper work of the Diversity Alliance?”
Rullak leaned forward, facial tentacles quivering. “How did you obtain this sample, Esteemed Tarkona? And where may we get more?”
She stepped up onto the dais, where she slumped back into her stone chair. Hovrak stood quietly beside her, letting Nolaa do the talking.
“A scavenger named Fonterrat stumbled upon the secret depot where this plague is stored. He stole two small samples, not entirely realizing what he had found, and brought the vials to me, along with a description of the facility. But Fonterrat was suspicious and greedy. He cited an outrageous price. I quibbled with him.
“Because only Fonterrat knew the location of the depot, he was afraid I might torture him for the information. Of course, the Diversity Alliance would never harm a fellow alien.” She smiled sweetly. “Humans are our only targets.
“Fonterrat requested that I send an emissary to a neutral location. There, my emissary would hand him a time-locked container holding his enormous fee. He, in turn, would deliver his entire navicomputer module, the only repository of the plague depot’s coordinates.”
She tapped her long fingernails on the arm of her chair. “It seemed a safe enough arrangement for all concerned. It amused me to enlist a human emissary to do my dirty work. Such delicious irony. I chose Bornan Thul, an arrogant merchant, who seemed to think he owned the galaxy.